{"id":10755,"date":"2025-11-24T10:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T11:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rutha.org\/?p=10755"},"modified":"2025-11-28T12:29:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:29:12","slug":"quality-of-design-education-lower-than-it-was-say-designers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rutha.org\/index.php\/2025\/11\/24\/quality-of-design-education-lower-than-it-was-say-designers\/","title":{"rendered":"Quality of design education “lower than it was” say designers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Graduates\"<\/div>\n

Ailing design education<\/a> is leaving graduates unprepared for the realities of industry and saddled with debt, established designers have warned as part of our Performance Review<\/a> series.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Design education is fucked,” said designer Andu Masebo<\/a>, who graduated from the Royal College of Art<\/a> in 2021 with a master’s in Design Products<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It’s so bad, I don’t know if it should be fixed,” he told Dezeen. “I think we should tear it down and refashion it into a completely new model. From my experience, all of it but one tutor was a nightmare.”<\/p>\n

“The quality of design education is lower than it was 25 years ago,” echoed Pearson Lloyd<\/a> co-founder Tom Lloyd<\/a>. “And it’s more expensive.”<\/p>\n

For a long time, when applying to design schools, students have anticipated their courses as crucial stepping stones to bagging top industry jobs.<\/p>\n

But speaking to Dezeen for our ongoing Performance Review series<\/a>, multiple\u00a0top designers agreed that they have noticed a distinctive decline in the quality of design education in recent years \u2013 an alarming trend that jars with an increasingly competitive job market.<\/p>\n

“Too many design courses”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“I do think we’re in an age now where students can’t just go and get a degree and walk into a job,” said Jo Barnard<\/a>, who founded her design agency Morrama<\/a> at age 24.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason for this, said Barnard, is a lack of connection between university courses and the creative working world.<\/p>\n

“I think that there should be a closer relationship between design and business at an educational level,” she explained. “So that people can understand the implications of what it is that they’re creating from a business perspective.”<\/p>\n

“There are too many design courses, and there are too many courses that don’t have a really strong connection with industry,” continued Barnard.<\/p>\n

“There are students doing three years of a design course, but at no point do they even get a week of work experience. For me, that feels so wrong.”<\/p>\n